


Respirator

by sinemoras09



Category: Original Work
Genre: COVID-19, Gen, Hospitals, Medical, Medical Jargon, Original Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:46:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23268685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinemoras09/pseuds/sinemoras09
Summary: The hospital is starting to look like something from a zombie apocalypse. Original Work.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	Respirator

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.

1.

There are field tents pitched in the Employee Parking Lot.

"What the hell is this?" I say, and I roll down my window at a security guard wearing latex gloves and a respirator coming to the locked gate.

"We're using this space for PUIs. You need to park across the street."

"PUIs?" I'd been home for a week - I have no idea what the hell he's talking about.

"Persons Under Investigation," the security guard says. He points at the orange tents and the queue of people being led from Triage, all in a line two meters apart. "You need to park over at administration. You don't need a sticker, you can park there."

"Where's administration?" I know the hospital but the administrative buildings are completely foreign to me. The security guard points.

"Just back out, make a left, and go down to the light. Administration'll be on your right."

"Great." I make a U and leave the parking lot.

*****

Madhavi laughs at me. "Didn't you see the emails?"

"I just got off a string of nights. You really think I'd check 'em?"

Madhavi shakes her head. "COVID," she says. "The whole hospital's on a state of alert. You should've seen it last week - the ER was a shitshow."

"How many admissions?" I ask. Madhavi snorts.

"Too many. Hospital went on freaking divert."

*****

There's a pod meeting this morning, so instead of printing out my census and figuring out which floors to hit first, I shuffle over to the conference room where my other co-workers are sitting. Usually these things are perfunctory - "it's holiday season, people need to put in their requests," or, "so-and-so had a family emergency, can anyone change shifts?" - but instead of the semi-formal meeting and a quick rundown of the census, the head of the intensivist program is standing there, his face pinched. The other hospitalists shift restlessly.

"So," our team leader says. "Does anyone here have vent management experience?"

Someone pipes up, "Yeah, like ten years ago in residency." There's a ripple of nervous laughter. No one standing in front of us is smiling. The head intensivist glares.

"We're almost at capacity," the intensivist says. "Pretty soon, there'll be more vented patients than intensivists, so we need people with vent management experience to help round on them."

"Wait, you mean you're asking us to help cover critical care?"

The intensivist nods, gravely. "It'd be on a volunteer basis, of course," he says. "I only want physicians who are comfortable." The other hospitalists glance at each other.

I tentatively raise my hand. "Um, in my endo fellowship, I had critical care training." The intensivist nods at me, grimly.

"Good," he says. He looks around. "Anyone else?"

*****

The endocrine fellowship, the one with the random six months of critical care experience, had been combined with pulmonary-critical care, because there weren't enough fellows to justify funding. The pulmonary chair came over to the endocrine chair and asked, is it possible to have your fellows round with ours? We can list our critical care fellowship as something separate you can add on, and the endocrine chair agreed.

So this is how a primarily office-based fellow ended up managing vents in a community ICU, going to pulmonary lectures with the other pulm/crit-care fellows, woefully behind but reading furiously to catch up with them.

I'm not an endocrinologist. The field is saturated, at least in my city, so I ended up working as a hospitalist. The schedule is good - you have a week of getting your ass kicked, but then you get a week off to recuperate. I spent my week off binging TV shows instead of checking my work email or watching the news.

"I don't get how people are complaining about the lockdown," Madhavi says. We're sitting side-by-side at the computers, going over patient labs and putting in orders. "You see these jokers? They're posting all over social media about how stir crazy they're getting. I mean, you have Netflix! There's the internet! You can sleep," Madhavi says, and I laugh, because god knows both our favorite thing is going to sleep.

"You see Naomi Campbell?"

"What about Naomi Campbell?"

I keep my eyes fixed on the screen. "She fuckin' wore a hazmat suit at the airport."

"Wait, seriously?"

I pull up the article on my phone.

There's a shortage of N95s. We already got the directive from the medical director - we have to reuse our N95s for a minimum of 3 days, more if the mask is still intact. It's only Day One, but I've had six PUIs so far.

"This damn bitch," Madhavi says. She hands me back the phone.

We type. All charting is on the computer now, and we younger docs have a leg up on the older ones, since we can actually type. Older docs dictate their notes, which used to be fine when there was a transcription service, but our hospital is cheap and so switched to dictation software instead of dictating on the phone.

"Assessment and plan," an older doctor says. He holds up the microphone. "Number one, pneumonia." The word on the screen flashes, RODENTIA. "No, delete. Pneumonia." The words on the screen flash, NEW MOON, YEAH. The older doc grunts and leans back in his chair, frustrated.

We type, and for awhile there's nothing but the sound of fingers clacking on the keyboard. I click on a new patient's chart when I hear it: someone coughing loudly. I turn and see one of the older docs coughing into his elbow. He turns back to the microphone.

Wordlessly, a nurse steps beside him and hands him a purple top of Sani-Wipes. Sheepishly, the doctor wipes down his microphone.

*****

The change in policy comes in like a flash of lightning.

"We can't use our respirators?" The docs stare incredulously as administration stands by the nursing station, breaking the bad news.

We're not allowed to use N95s on PUIs. Confirmed cases only. All clinicians need to use surgical masks until further notice.

"You gotta be fucking kidding," Madhavi says.

The nurses, the ones who spend the most time with the patients, are livid. "You're putting all of us at risk! How is using surgical masks going to protect us?" People are pissed, but it only tamps down the growing panic. Keeps it just below the surface, the indignation keeping it from spilling over.

*****

"Did you see the newest guidelines? The CDC says we need to use scarves and bandanas."

"Wait, seriously?"

"It's bad enough we're using surgical masks."

" _Reusing_ surgical masks. Is anyone actually wiping them down? Because when I do they fall apart."

"No no, dummy, you're supposed to throw those away, just reuse the N95 masks. You can't disinfect a surgical mask, it's too flimsy."

"Oh thank god," my co-worker sighs. "Because I actually haven't been reusing them."

There's a nurse going around the floor doing temperature spot checks. Anyone with a temp greater than 100.4 is sent home. "98.7," the nurse says. She hands me a clearance sticker. I stick it on my badge. In the background, I hear my other co-worker talking to her wife on the phone.

"They closed the schools?!" My ears perk up as she begins to pace. We're not technically supposed to take personal calls here, but her kids are being sent home and both of them are working. "Wait, we have to pick them up by noon? What'll we do? I still have my shift--"

"How many patients do you have?" I say. She covers her phone in her hand.

"I rounded on most of them already, I just need to chart them."

"We'll divy up the census. I'll go say hi to them. Go home."

Soon, the entire state shuts down its schools.

*****

5 AM. After the time change, the sky is still dark. I park in the administration lot and drape my white coat over my arm. The hospital is a few blocks north of the parking lot, but I show up early to my shift in case I take too long when I walk.

The orange medical tents flap slightly in the breeze, and security guards in respirators mill around the outside, their bodies backlit by the yellow glow of the pole lights. The effect is eerie: orange tents glow against a pitch black sky, the nurses and the patients nothing but a few dark silhouettes moving among the shadows. It looks almost like something from a war, one of those zombie apocalypse movies just before everything turns into a shit show.

I make a turn toward the triage entrance where a nurse is doing a screening checklist on a potential patient, the thermometer dangling out of his mouth like a cigarette.

"The door's closed," the nurse says. I glance back. "They closed off all the employee entrances so they can do temperature checks before going inside. You have to go through the front door."

Christ. The hospital is actually three buildings, the main entrance at the centermost building. I have to turn around and walk.

*****

The respirator in my pocket is starting to look threadbare.

"Shit, the elastic snapped off," someone says, but there are no more respirators on the floor, he has to staple the elastic back on.

Someone has stolen all the Sani-Wipes from the storage closet, so there's a panicked few minutes while the charge nurse calls the other floors to see if anyone has any extra supplies. "Some asshole took them all!" the nurse says, and all of us who are supposed to be charting hover anxiously by the computers. "Can you wash a stethoscope with soap and water?" someone asks. There's little squares of nail polish remover; we pass the little box around like we're sharing a joint.

"Any of you bitches cough on this keyboard, and I'll personally kick your ass," someone says, and people laugh nervously. We chart and type and line up silently by the single sink behind the nurses' station to wash our hands.

*****

The daytime admitters are getting pounded, so I'm pulled off the floor and reassigned to the ER to help them. It's like a fucking war zone: patients are lined up on gurneys against the hallways since all the rooms are being used. Someone had helpfully started labeling these spots with computer paper and orange sharpie: "HALLWAY 1," the sign says, and it's taped above the gurney with masking tape. "HALLWAY 2," another sign says. Whoever was doing the signs got tired, though, because at the end they started writing, "H15," then, "H16."

"That kinda looks like H1N1," my co-worker says, standing by the sign.

There are so many PUIs I make a custom order set on the computer.

*****

I'm heading back to the floor when I see it: a patient visitor stealing plastic blue gowns from the equipment cart, loading them by the boxful under his arms. "Hey," I say. I walk forward. "That's for employees only. You can't take that."

The man glances back at me, then breaks into a run.

"What the fuck," I say, while a nurse runs behind me.

"What's going on?"

"That dude just stole our equipment."

"Shit," says the nurse, and she calls security onto the floor.

****

"Hey Madhavi," I say. Her eyes are trained on the computer.

"What?"

"Some rando guy was stealing blue gowns from the equipment cart."

"You've gotta be shitting me."

"I mean, they're basically trash bags, they're useful to no one."

"Ugh," Madhavi says. She clicks through her note. "If he were smart, he'd steal the face masks by the door."

*****

2.

There's a small gathering of white coats hunched over the screen of an iPhone.

" _Hey all you Howie-heads! It's me, Joe Howie, kickin' it up in Quarantine!_ " The YouTube influencer's face fills up the tiny screen. " _Look what I got, you guys! I got these N95 masks--"_ and there's an audible gasp, and a sharp-whispered, "Motherfucker," as the stupid influencer grins smugly, " _\--and with these bad boys, we're gonna kick it Howie style. It's gonna be lit!"_ and he holds up an N95 and sets it on fire with a cigarette lighter.

"What the fuck!" I say, and the nurses behind me turn to look. I lower my voice. "That should be illegal."

"I bet that asshole stole those respirators."

"You know, he was in Japan, and he tormented the locals by throwing raw fish at them."

"What an asshole."

They turn off the iPhone.

At the pod meeting, they discuss going on a platoon schedule.

"Twenty-four hours instead of twelve," the team leader says. "The idea being we limit exposure to different people and keep working with the same team."

"But how's that gonna work? The nurses are on a different schedule."

"Admitters are higher risk," the team leader says. "They're going to the ER seeing people who don't even come in with COVID symptoms, but may be asymptomatic carriers. We need to spread out the risk."

"So what are we thinking?" Madhavi says. The team leader frowns grimly.

"Twenty-four hour shifts. We spread admits equally among all the floor rounders and stay at night to take ER call."

"But that's crazy, there's like ten of us, we're all going to be at the hospital at night?"

"Yes," the team leader says. "Everyone on night shift is getting hammered. They're doing triple the admissions. The only way to do it safely is to increase our staffing."

"By having us stay in the hospital for 24 hours?"

"It's not ideal," the team leader says. "We haven't implemented it yet, but the leadership in administration is thinking about it. This is an example," he says, and he uncaps a marker, writing out the schedule. We watch as the marker squeaks on the white board.

MONDAY - 24 hours ON  
TUESDAY - 24 hours OFF (sleep)  
WEDNESDAY - 24 hours ON  
THURSDAY - 24 hours OFF (sleep)  
FRIDAY - 24 hours ON  
SAT - 24 hours OFF (sleep)  
SUN - OFF

"We'll obviously be staggering this, and the people who are off will be on-call as back-up, in case anyone on their 'on' shifts develops COVID symptoms or has a fever," he says.

The mood is grim when we leave the pod meeting.

"I mean, they haven't implemented it yet," I say, helpfully. Madhavi groans theatrically.

On the floor, a GI doc is going around offering people N95 masks. "My aunt lives in Taiwan and she can get us some. It's three dollars a mask," she says. "She's sending a couple boxes. Does anyone want some?"

We clamor over to her, giving her our wishlist of orders: "Can I get a couple boxes? Is it possible to buy a hundred?"

"I can't guarantee she can purchase that many, but I'll definitely share them with you guys when I get them."

I go round on a PUI patient who I'm 99% sure has COVID. There's a sad box of surgical masks sitting at the door next to a DROPLET PRECAUTION sign. I ignore the box and pull out my N95 mask.

"What do you think you're doing?" Someone from administration comes over.

I blink, confused. "I'm putting on my mask."

"This is a PUI. You can't use a respirator there."

"Why not? My respirator's fine," I say, even though the orange color's already worn off, it's barely intact. The administrator bristles.

"If the others see you using an N95, they're going to want to use their N95s as well, and then our stock will dwindle and all we'll have left will be these surgical masks for the COVID positive patients," the administrator says. "Put it away. Use the surgical mask. Now."

"Sorry," I say, and I grab a surgical mask. The administrator bristles.

"Oooh, someone got in trouble," Madhavi says, sing-song, as I slink into my computer chair.

*****

We see patients during our daytime shifts; usually the time is divided up talking to patients and family members, making phone calls and writing notes and orders. Usually there's a few breaks here and there - a twenty minute window to grab lunch, a quick stop to chat or a bathroom break as you go to different floors. Sometimes one of the nurses brings cookies in the break room and lets us have some.

There isn't time for breaks anymore, and I go through entire shifts without eating. Patients are worried and families are panicking. Everyone's census is maxed out and the hospital is woefully understaffed.

"Maybe platoon scheduling wouldn't be a bad thing," I say, while Madhavi rummages for graham crackers from the nutrition closet. "I mean, I was here until 10 o'clock last night finishing notes. It was practically midnight by the time I got home."

"It's a shit show," Madhavi says. She pulls out a packet of peanut butter and dips in her graham cracker. "If you think now is bad, imagine trying to do those notes while juggling ER admissions. It's freaking impossible."

"I started writing crap notes," I say. My notes are usually detailed; now they only have the bare minimum. Madhavi looks over my shoulder.

"Wow," Madhavi says. She clicks her tongue. "That really is a shitty note."

I laugh, then try to remember not to rub my eyes. Everyone is tired. A family member comes up to the nurse's station, and Madhavi goes up to talk to her, putting on her ratty N95 mask and disappearing into the patient's room.

*****

3.

I don't like taking the elevator; the employee elevators are slow and the public-facing elevators always have patient families riding in it, and invariably someone will start asking me questions that are blatant HIPAA violations if I answer them. A few times, family members have followed me from the elevator into the cafeteria and even the bathroom, persistent in their questioning. This is why I prefer to take the stairs.

I've finished rounding on the floor, and swipe my card at the stairwell, intending to walk up the two flights to the next floor. The stairwell is remote - I'm in a back hallway, right next to the janitor's closet - and so I'm startled when I open the door and hear someone crying a few flights above me.

My first instinct is to quickly turn around and shut the door, and let whoever is crying have their private moment, but as I turn I hear a wobbly voice call out, "Hello?"

"Sorry," I say. "I didn't mean to disturb you."

"No, it's okay." A sniffle. "I was just about to leave, anyway."

I walk up the stairs. Sitting at the top of the floor is a young blonde doc I recognize as the new hire from a few months earlier.

"Laura, right?" I say, and I sit down next to her. I've seen her at the pod meetings, but I haven't actually met her. She sniffs and nods.

She's a new grad who's planning to work a year with us before applying for a rheumatology fellowship. Until now we'd been on opposing schedules, so this is the first time we've actually met. "Everything okay?" I say, and her eyes start to water.

"I'm so tired," she says, and she starts sobbing. I nod, understanding. Residency doesn't prepare you for this. Residency is all humane work hour limits and caps on admissions. There's a huge learning curve when you become an attending, and when you're a baby-faced newbie it takes you twice as long to see a normal patient. It was just really bad luck that Laura was hired a month before a global pandemic.

"Did you eat yet?" I ask. I rummage in my pocket, then pull out a pack of crackers. She takes the packet miserably and sniffles, tearing it open at the corners. "They keep turkey sandwiches on the fourth floor by Labor and Delivery. They even have grape soda," I say, even though technically we're not supposed to be pilfering from the OBGYN department's fridge, but desperate times call for desperate measures and the cafeteria is in an entirely different building, really really far. "They don't care if you eat them," I say.

"Really?" she says, and I nod, standing up.

"Yeah, I'll show you."

I badge into Labor and Delivery, motioning for her to follow.

*****

The surgery department and the OBGYN department share a suite of call rooms, a place where people can sleep if there's downtime during a 24-hour shift; there are four separate rooms with beds and an interconnected lounge between them. There's a refrigerator that's stocked with water and snacks, and there's a wall of computers the docs can use to chart and follow up on patients. Our call room, on the other hand, was converted into a patient family lounge. Someone bitched about it, and so we were given a new call room, except this time it was a desk and a chair shoved in what used to be a janitor's closet, in a building that was on the opposite end from the ER.

"Wow," Laura says, and she looks around. "This is really nice."

"I know!" I say. "Have you seen our call room? It's a total shit hole. We don't even have a computer."

I open the fridge: as expected, it's well-stocked with sandwiches and drinks. We both take a sandwich; I still have a handful of patients to round on, but I figure it's good to take a break. There are empty computers here, and at least I can finish some charts while I eat. "This is for the surgeons, right? Are you sure we're not going to get in trouble?" Laura asks. I laugh.

"Seriously? You're not a resident anymore. You can eat a turkey sandwich. It's allowed."

We get to work. I answer a few pages and do a few notes, chewing the turkey sandwich as I type. And then it hits me:

I didn't wash my hands.

My eyes widen. Shit. I washed my hands before I left the floor, but then I touched the door and the hand rail of the stairwell, and I hadn't wiped down the keyboard. I was too distracted by turkey sandwiches and trying to finish my notes.

"You are so fucking stupid. You're gonna get COVID, you know that?" Madhavi says, after I join her on the floor later. I groan and hold my head in my hands. "Ugh! And now you're touching your face with your dirty hands!"

"I'm not touching my T-zone, I'm holding my head," I say. My voice is muffled behind my arms. Another co-worker peers around.

"We're probably already infected. We're probably just asymptomatic," he says.

"You're such an optimist," I say. Madhavi snorts.

There aren't enough tests for us to get tested, it's only if we have symptoms. As if on cue, a nurse comes around for a temperature check. She passes us all, and hands out clearance stickers.

I'm still rounding on patients when I run into one of my co-workers who's working nights this week. "You're still here?" he says, and I glance at the clock. 8 o'clock. I haven't even finished rounding.

"I got distracted by a turkey sandwich," I say.

"OB lounge?" he asks. I nod, grimly. "Did you know they have roast beef, now?"

"Seriously?" I say, but my pager goes off. The family of one my COVID patients wants to talk to me, and the nurses told them I'm still here.

The lobby is dark when I'm finally finished, the house lights dimmed except for the few mood lights installed along the corridor. The employee entrance by the ER is still blocked, so I walk to the front of the building, quickly shucking off my white coat and stethoscope. I step outside the hospital, only to find that it started raining. My car is in administration, down several blocks.

There's plastic umbrella bags by the security desk; I ball up my white coat and wrap my phone and my pager in the plastic. Throwing a hand over my head, I run down the sidewalk, where I can hear the sound of medical tents flapping; there's talk of the makeshift tent city possibly getting flooded, and a few people swearing as they get wet standing outside Triage.

*****

4.

It's an unspoken rule that whoever's working swing shift stock up our shitty call room with Costco drinks and snacks.

Swing shift is the best shift: noon to midnight. In the mornings you can sleep in, waking up well-rested because you had time to sleep at night. Nights is the worst because by the time you're acclimated, your week is already over, and then it takes the whole 7 days off to get readjusted. The patient load on swing shift is pretty good, too: you do ER admits alone until 7 PM, then you help out the people working on night shift.

At a given time, we have seven dayshift rounders, one swing and two people working nights. Usually three docs after 7 PM is enough, but now they're seeing triple the volume.

"Holy shit, they did sixty admits?!" We look at our census, horrified.

We divy up the new admits, and I stare forlornly at the ever-growing list on my census. On a good day you see 15 to 18 patients, but now we're averaging 28 to 30. It's horrible and I find if I don't just put in the orders right away, I start mixing people up.

A nurse comes up behind me. "Hey 402's blood pressure dropped. Can I get a liter bolus?"

"Yeah," I say, and I start to put in the order when I realize 402 is on dialysis.

Oh, fuck. I almost ordered fluids on a dialysis patient. Those patients can't make urine, they're on strict fluid restrictions and if you give them too much, the fluid backs up into their lungs. "What's their MAP?" I ask. "Are they symptomatic?"

"You're not gonna order fluids?"

"He's on dialysis, I can't."

The nurse blinks at me. "He's not," she says. She speaks slowly at me, like she's talking to an idiot.

"Wait," I shuffle through my papers.

402 and 405 have the same diagnosis, they're both bald old guys but 405 is on dialysis. I groan and rub my head. "I'm sick of these COVID patients."

"They're not COVID. They're PUIs."

"I know." I sigh heavily and lean forward on the computer.

*****

"Everybody's starting to blend together."

It's 11 PM, and most of us are just now finishing rounding. We're sitting in the call room, guzzling Costco cokes as the swing shifter is preparing to finish his shift. "Today I mixed up a dialysis patient with another patient. They freaking had the same diagnosis."

"It could be worse," the swing shifter says. He cracks his shoulder. "I still have to dictate eleven admits."

"Wait, what?" I say and the swing shifter nods.

"I get out almost the same time as the night admitters. And the guys at night are getting so slammed, they haven't been leaving the hospital. They've just been camping out in the surgery call rooms."

"Oh, fuck," I say, when we realize if Swing is staying until 7 AM finishing up, the night shifters are probably still working until noon.

It comes up at the next pod meeting. "Bridging orders," the team leader says. "Night shift'll just make sure they stay alive, and whoever picks them up in the morning does the H & P."

"Who bills for the admit, though?" We glance around the room, frowning. The team leader sighs.

"Let the night guys have it. Just do what you can to help the team."

There's more talk of switching to platoon scheduling, but the only thing holding back administration is that patient care is going to be fractured. Whoever is admitted to the hospital will be seeing different docs every other day; the hospital will get dinged because of a lack of patient continuity.

"It's too bad we can't just live in the hospital," one of the younger ones joke.

We start giving the newbie more patients.

"What?" Laura says. Her eyes are wide and her face is pale. She looks like a baby deer who's realizing they're going to be turned into road kill. "But I'm, I'm already seeing 20 patients...."

"20 patients is high average," the team leader says, gently. "The other guys are hitting 30." Laura has the fewest patients but stays the latest out of all of us. Her blue eyes fill with tears.

"Hey, you know how to do template notes?" Madhavi says. She puts her arm around Laura's shoulder. "Look, there's these little dots in the corner, right? Click here, you can Save As Template, and the next time you have a patient with the same diagnosis, you can load this note and make a few changes."

"You should start making order sets, too," I say, and I show Laura how to build custom order sets, so all she has to do is command-search the diagnosis. The orders pre-populate on the screen.

"Jesus Christ, they baby these fucking residents," Madhavi says, after Laura's walked out of earshot. "Remember when we were residents? We had fucking thirty-hour shifts. There were no caps. We ran the goddamn ICU and no one held our hands."

"You're old," I say. I type on the computer. "And it's not safe. It's better for the patients."

"Did you see her? She's crying in the call room because she has 24 patients."

I click on the screen. "24 is a lot," I say.

Madhavi falls silent. We're both tired and cranky, and we get a mass email from administration helpfully reminding us that the graham crackers are only for patients. They start asking for volunteers to come into work on their days off, and I go to the supply room and sign out a second N95 mask. The seal had finally broken on my old one.

**Author's Note:**

> COVID-19 - the flu-like illness caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2. 
> 
> Dialysis - refers to people who have End Stage Renal Disease - basically people whose kidneys have failed. Kidneys filter toxins out of the blood, so three times a week, people with ESRD have to be hooked up to an artificial kidney, called a dialysis machine, to clean their blood.
> 
> H1N1 - refers to influenza A subtype H1N1, which caused the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918 and the Swine flu pandemic in 2009. The H stands for hemagglutinin and the N for neuraminidase. They're glycoproteins that are expressed on the virus.
> 
> HIPAA - Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Basically says you can't share patient information with anyone without a patient's permission.
> 
> H & P - History and Physical. A dictated report of why a patient came to the hospital, along with their medical history and what the admitting physician plans to do to treat them.
> 
> MAP - Mean Arterial Pressure. It measures the average blood pressure in a cardiac cycle. Anything over 65 ensures good blood perfusion so that all your organs get enough oxygen.
> 
> Orders - a set of instructions given to nursing to help facilitate a patient's treatment plan. An example would be ordering a certain medication or ordering an xray.
> 
> Progress Note - a daily note in the chart detailing that day's physical exam and how the patient's condition has changed. Also has the plan and how it's updated based on the patient's condition.
> 
> PUI - Person Under Investigation. Any patient who comes in for flu-like symptoms and needs to be ruled out for COVID.
> 
> T-zone - refers to the areas of the face you shouldn't touch without washing your hands, ie your eyes, nose, and mouth.


End file.
